Le Franc-tireur (1972) - film review

Whilst the Allied forces arrive in the North to liberate the French nation from German Occupation, the South is still very much in the grip of Nazi control.  As they make an eastward retreat, German soldiers are intent on a wholesale purge, wiping out rural communities with ruthless efficiency.  Narrowly escaping one such attack on his homestead, an ordinary Frenchman, Michel Perrat flees in to the open countryside of the Vercours, where he encounters a ramshackle group of resistance fighters.  As the German soldiers are obviously intent on hunting them down, Michel has no option but to join this group, not because he has any sympathy with the resistance cause, but to preserve his own life.  As, one by one, his new comrades are taken out, Michel begins to realise that his chance of survival is becoming very remote…

Made in 1972, it wasn’t until 2002 that this evocative wartime drama by Jean-Max Causse and Roger Taverne was given a general cinema release.  The film’s subject was bound to arouse controversy – as has any film made since the Liberation which dared to challenge the “accepted” version of the war and its aftermath.   Instead of showing the resistance fighters in a heroic light, the film paints a depressing picture of war and its consequences.  The “hero” (if he can be called such) – played magnificently by Philippe Léotard in his first leading film role – is an ordinary man whose actions are driven not by some noble, idealistic cause, but by a simple animalistic need to live and stay living.  It is this natural instinct that keeps him alive whilst all of the supposedly better men around him are butchered like sheep.  Bleak and uncompromising, the film’s naturalistic feel is emphasised by its raw location (the massif of the Vercours), which is both stunningly beautiful and strangely menacing, and also by the understated writing and direction.  Although rough and ready, and slightly amateurish in a few places, the film makes quite an impact, and should be prized for daring to show a side of war that is rarely seen on either the big or the small screen.


© James Travers 2006

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?